Talking Climate Change at UUFN this Wednesday
Dr. Chad Tolman and I will be on the program at the United Universalist Fellowship of Newark this Wednesday night at 7:00 p.m. to talk about climate change. Chad knows as much about climate science as anyone in Delaware. I will talk about the economics.
The News Journal published Chad's op-ed on Tom Carper, Ted Kaufman and the EPA's endangerment finding on carbon emissions. Carper and Kaufman. As I reported back in January, all twelve Democratic members of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, including Carper, signed a letter opposing an attempt to overturn the EPA's ruling.
The News Journal published Chad's op-ed on Tom Carper, Ted Kaufman and the EPA's endangerment finding on carbon emissions. Carper and Kaufman. As I reported back in January, all twelve Democratic members of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee, including Carper, signed a letter opposing an attempt to overturn the EPA's ruling.
posted by Tom Noyes at 7:32 AM
8 Comments:
Chad is a complete fraud.
He like Gore and James Hansen will not debate the subject in a public forum.
The Sierra Club did at one time do public debates, no more, they lost and lost badly.
Here is a proposal. Have Chad, Al Gore and James Hansen come to the Chase Center at the Riverfront. Get the NewsJournal and the U of D to sponcer the event. We can do the event for Charity.
Once you get those 3 lined up, give me a call. I'll show up with 2 friends of mine and we'll have a discussion on the topic.
I'll save you some time......they ain't showing.
I have to object most strenuously to your characterization of Dr. Tolman. I am familiar with his credentials and his understanding of climate science. In contrast, I have no idea who you are or the basis for your comment, except that you evidently disagree with Dr. Tolman, who by the way has offered public comments or testimony in any number of public hearings and forums.
As for you proposed debate, I have participated in or organized all sorts of discussions on environmental matters. I do not customarily take part in or organize events proposed by those who choose to remain anonymous.
Of course, you could show up Wednesday night and present your questions to the two of us.
The current series on sustainability at UUFN in Newark is outstanding. Each question I have submitted to the moderator has been addressed to the panelists, and each has been answered with expertise.
I heartily recommend "Climate Change - What's Next in Delware?" on March 03, and "Spirituality and the Environment" on March 10.
Regards,
Prancin' Pam
Before I address some of Mr. Tomlans past remarks, A climate timeline:
1.9 billion years ago: Nitrogen-dominated atmosphere replaced by oxygen-rich atmosphere
540 million years ago: Earth turned from “ice ball” into a warm and humid world. Simple microbes in the ocean transform into thousands of new species, founding the evolution of today’s life forms.
350 to 250 million years ago: Ice sheets reappear at higher Earth latitudes. There is only one large continental landmass, Gondwana, in the southern hemisphere.
300 million years ago: Earth uniformly hot and humid, land area dominated by swamps and rain forest.
250 million years ago: Permian period, hot and so dry that huge salt deposits are formed from ocean evaporation.
100 million years ago: Age of Dinosaurs. The Earth is still warm, again humid and generally uniform.
30 million years ago: Antarctica separates from South America and the Southern Ocean is born. Shortly after, glaciers start to expand in Antarctica.
5 million years ago: Modern climate begins to develop as separation of continents produce the great oceanic temperature conveyor in the North Atlantic.
130,000 to 110,000 years ago: Eemian interglacial, warm.
110,000 years ago: Fairly sudden shift to much colder than present glacial conditions.
30,000 years ago: Last Ice Age reached its coldest point
21,000 to 17,000 years ago. Sea levels four hundred feet lower than today.
14,000 years ago: Sudden warming, raising Earth temperatures to roughly present levels. Sea levels begin to rise.
12,500 years ago: The Younger Dryas. After only 1,500 years of recovery from the Ice Age, the Earth was suddenly plunged back into a new, short-lived ice age. Another 1,000 years or so of ice age followed before sudden shift back to climate warming.
11,500 years ago: The present interglacial period, the Holocene. The planet warmed from ice age to nearly present world temperatures in less than one hundred years. Half of the warming may have occurred in fifteen years. Ice sheets melted, sea levels rose again.
9,000 to 5,000 years ago: Climate Optimum, warmer and wetter than the Earth’s present climate.
2,600 years ago: Cooling event with relatively wet conditions in many parts of the world.
600 to 200 B.C: Unnamed cold period that preceded the Roman Warming.
200 B.C to about A.D 600: Roman Warming period.
600 to 900: Dark Ages cold period
900 to 1300: Medieval Warming or Little Climate Optimum.
1300 to 1850: Little Ice Age.
1850 to 1940: Warming, especially between 1920 and 1940.
1940 to 1975: Cooling trend
1976 to 1978: Sudden warming spurt.
1979 to present: A large disparity between surface thermometers , which show a fairly strong warming, and the independent readings of satellites and balloons, which show little to no warming.
By JEFF MONTGOMERY • The News Journal • January 22, 2010
Wind power could meet 20 percent or more of electricity demand in the eastern United States by 2024, if the effort includes sufficient planning and billions in spending for transmission lines and other needs, a government study has concluded.
Chad Tolman, energy committee chairman for the Sierra Club Delaware Chapter, said the Energy Department findings are an important step
“Delaware happens to have a very rich renewable energy resource in the form of its offshore wind,” Tolman said. “I think we ought to be trying to make the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy resources as rapidly as possible. That’s particularly important for Delaware, since it’s a coastal state that is very vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise.”
http://www.eclipsesolar.com/wpes/?m=201001
Windmills are huge structures that produce very little electricity- and then only when the wind blows within certain speed ranges. It would take nearly 2,000 new 750-kilowatt wind turbines operating at the normal 28% capacity factor to produce as much electricity as on 500-megawatt gas fired combined cycle base-load generating plant.
Electricity from wind energy does not much reduce emissions from coal and other fossil-fueled electric generating plants. Because wind turbines produce only intermittently, other generating plants have to be immediately available – either running at less than full capacity or in “spinning reserve”- to supply electricity when wind speed drops or disappears. The backup plants still produce emissions while in this backstopping mode.
The EIA projects that wind energy will supply just 0.0025% of the U.S electricity generation in 2020.
The cost of wind energy is not competitive and wind farms would not be constructed without massive subsidies. Developers are building “wind farms” for four reasons – all of which shift costs from wind developers and hide them in unsuspecting Americans’ tax bills and monthly electric bills
1.) Lucrative tax shelters
2.) State Mandates
3.) “Greenwashing” for public relation purposes
4.) Green pricing programs
In August of 2007 while addressing the League of Woman Voters http://www.lwvnj.org/camdencounty/voter/07/2007_08.pdf Mr. Tomlan made the claim that man made global warming will cause:
1.) Extinction of species
2.) More powerful hurricanes
3.) Property losses due to rising sea levels.
Extinction of species – Most of the world’s animal species “body types” were laid down during the Cambrian period, 600 million years ago. Thus, we know that the major species have dealt successfully through the ages with new pest enemies, new diseases, ice ages, and global warming higher than today’s.
Virtually every wild species is at least one million years old. Not the least of the warming’s was the Holocene Climate Optimum which was warmer than the predictions of the IPCC for 2100.
More powerful hurricanes – Earth’s weather patterns are driven by the fact that the planet heats unevenly, during the days and through the seasons. The equator, being the broadest part of the planet, absorbs the most heat. The polar regions, having the least surface area, absorb the least. Winds and ocean currents even out the terrestrial temperatures by carrying warmer air and warmer water away from the equator, and circulating the colder air and water back from the polar regions.
The bigger the temperature difference between the equator and the poles, the more power is given to the winds, waves and currents – and to the storms. Thus, a global warming that primarily increased polar and winter temperatures should mean fewer and milder storms, not bigger, fiercer ones.
Property losses due to rising sea levels – Sea level has been rising about six inches per century, and it mostly will continue to rise. Sea levels have already risen about 400 feet since the last ice age. It is often said that rising sea levels will destroy our wetlands. Wetlands are not stationary, will continue to thrive as they move further inland, as they have over the past thousand years.
The original inspiration for Al Gore's involvement with the global warming issue was one of his professors at Harvard, Roger Revelle. In 1957 Revelle had published data showing increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In 1965 he helped attribute this increase to human burning of fossil fuels, and in 1982 he predicted that global warming could result from this increase. This made him "the father of the greenhouse effect." However, Revelle was not an alarmist and tended to recommend caution. In 1991, he coauthored an article with Fred Singer, saying, among other things, "Drastic, precipitous, and especially, unilateral steps to delay the putative greenhouse impacts can cost jobs and prosperity and increase the human costs of global poverty, without being effective."
It is not just that falsifying evidence is dismissed or explained away, something that often happens with scientific theories; but when any scientists produce or cite such evidence, they are smeared with personal attacks and attempts are made to discredit their bona fides as scientists and damage their professional standing. Albert Einstein was never personally attacked or his seriousness questioned just because of his skepticism over the peculiarities of quantum mechanics, the response was of the form "this is different." How is it different? Well, the theory of anthropogenic global warming has become a political ideology, a quasi-religious crusade, where heresy cannot be tolerated and skeptics or "deniers" are bundled into the same category as neo-Nazi Holocaust deniers. This in itself serves to discredit the rhetoric and the case, if not the science, of the global warming alarmists.
My accusation of Mr. Tomlan as a fraud stands.
He has scared people who neither have the time or resources to research the subject into buying into a political agenda.
http://www.earthprotect.com/index.php?option=com_seyret&Itemid=76&task=videodirectlink&id=1627
By fraud, I take it you mean Dr. Tolman isn't convinced by your arguments. I'm not convinced either.
As for the economics of wind power, I have studied the matter in considerable depth. You can read what I have to say on the economics of renewable energy and energy conservation in this blog.
Or you could come out to the UUFN tonight to hear Dr. Tolman and me speak.
Post a Comment
<< Home